US paid millions for Al-Qaeda prisoners

Agence France-Press, New York

US intelligence has paid Pakistan millions of dollars for handing over Al-Qaeda suspects it has captured, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf says in his book released on Monday.

In a collection of memoirs entitled In the Line of Fire, Musharraf details how the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) paid undisclosed rewards totalling millions of dollars for the more than 350 prisoners Pakistan has handed over.

"We have captured 689 and handed over 369 to the United States. We have earned bounties totalling millions of dollars," Musharraf says in the book.

"Those who habitually accuse us of 'not doing enough' in the war on terror should simply ask the CIA how much prize money it has paid to the government of Pakistan," he says, without specifying where the money came from.

The US State Department runs a "Rewards For Justice" programme promising millions of dollars in return for information leading to the arrest or conviction of a number of key suspects wanted for specific militant attacks.

However, the programme was not established to provide bounty payments for foreign governments, a spokesman said.

Officials said there were other, less public, programmes within the US government designed to encourage the handing over of militant suspects and run by agencies such as the Department of Defense, or the CIA.